Roman Emperor. He was born in 317 AD, and was declared Caesar in 323 AD and Consul in 326 AD. He was given power over the province of Gaul at the age of just fifteen by his father, the Emperor Constantine. On the death of his father in 337 AD, he travelled to Constantinople where he and his brothers were acknowledged as Augusti. They divided the Empire between them, and his share included the provinces of Greece, Thrace, Egypt and the Asiatic. In 351 AD he defeated an uprising led by Magnentius, who had murdered his brother Constans I and declared himself Emperor, and became the sole ruler of the Western Empire. He gave his cousin Gallus the title of Caesar, but had him executed for misconduct four years later, replacing him with Julian, later known as Julian the Apostate. He entered Rome for the first time in his life in 387 AD, and ordered an Egyptian obelisk erected there at the Circus Maximus. In 359 Julian was proclaimed as Emperor, and, while marching to confront him, he contracted a fever and died in 361 AD after a reign of twenty five years. (bio by: js)